How Randomness Can Make You More Creative – And Help Generate Better Ideas

Have you ever noticed that sometimes your best ideas arrive when you're not actually trying to have an idea?

You're driving somewhere.

Watching TV.

Playing a game.

Walking around a shop.

Talking to somebody about something completely unrelated.

And suddenly…

BANG.

Something connects.

You think:

“Hang on a minute… what if I did this?”

That's what I want to talk about today.

Randomness.

Can Randomness Actually Make You More Creative?

I think it can.

Sometimes deliberately.

Sometimes completely accidentally.

When I'm creating magic tricks, games or other products, I deliberately try to look at things from different directions.

Sometimes I'll introduce something completely unrelated and ask:

“What could I do with this?”

It might be an object.

A word.

A toy.

A game.

Something I've seen in a shop.

Something my son is playing with.

It might have absolutely nothing to do with the thing I'm trying to create.

And that's precisely the point.

Because it forces my brain to go somewhere it wasn't planning to go.

Your Best Ideas Don't Always Arrive at Your Desk

I don't think creativity necessarily works like this:

2:00pm – Sit at desk.

2:01pm – HAVE BRILLIANT IDEA.

If only!

The moment you put pressure on yourself to have a brilliant idea, your mind can go completely blank.

You start thinking about something else.

What's for dinner?

Where should we go on holiday?

Did I reply to that email?

And suddenly an hour has disappeared.

My ideas tend to arrive very differently.

I'll see something.

Hear a word.

Pick something up.

Play a game.

Notice how an object works.

And my brain suddenly makes a connection that wasn't there before.

That's when I start asking:

“What else could I do with that?”

ClipSip Started With a Completely Unplanned Accident

One of my favourite examples has nothing to do with magic.

It's an invention I created called KlipSip.

I'm a herbal tea drinker, and one day I was in the office shortly before a client meeting.

I took a sip of my tea.

The tea bag flopped over the side.

And I managed to get tea all over myself.

Wonderful.

I'm in the toilets trying to dry myself under a hand dryer, thinking:

There must be something that holds the tea bag against the side of the mug.

Later I looked online.

I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

And that random little accident started a process that eventually led to me developing ClipSip and protecting the idea.

I hadn't sat down that morning thinking:

“Today I'm going to invent a tea accessory.”

A problem appeared.

My brain noticed it.

And instead of forgetting about it, I asked:

“Could I solve that?”

Randomness Gives Your Brain Something New to Work With

That's the key for me.

Randomness doesn't necessarily give you the finished idea.

It gives your brain new material.

Imagine you've been thinking about the same problem for three hours.

You're using the same information.

The same assumptions.

The same reference points.

You're probably going around in circles.

Introduce something completely unrelated and suddenly you've changed the ingredients.

Your brain now has something new to connect.

And that's where things can become interesting.

Try Combining Two Completely Random Things

Let's do a little experiment.

I'll give you two things:

Playing cards.

And…

an umbrella.

There's no obvious connection.

So force yourself to find one.

Could you throw playing cards into the air and somehow catch the selected card on the umbrella?

Could a playing card appear when the umbrella opens?

Could the inside of the umbrella contain card predictions?

Could the umbrella itself somehow reveal a selection?

Some of those ideas might be absolutely terrible.

That's fine.

The objective isn't necessarily to immediately create a brilliant magic trick.

The objective is to make your brain create connections.

Stop Demanding Good Ideas

I think this is one of the biggest barriers to creativity.

We tell ourselves:

“I need a really good idea.”

Immediately we've created a problem.

Because every thought that follows gets judged.

That's rubbish.

Someone's probably already done it.

That's too expensive.

That'll never work.

That's stupid.

People will laugh at that.

Before the idea has even had a chance to develop, we've killed it.

I've created hundreds of magic tricks and countless other ideas over the years, and one thing I've learned is this:

At the beginning, I don't necessarily want good ideas.

I just want ideas.

Lots of them.

Twenty Bad Ideas Might Contain One Brilliant One

I'd rather generate 20 terrible ideas than sit waiting for one perfect idea.

Because idea number 17 might contain one tiny element that makes me think:

“Hang on…”

Perhaps the complete idea is useless.

But one component isn't.

I take that component.

Combine it with something else.

Change it.

Simplify it.

And suddenly I've got something.

That's why I write ideas down.

You don't necessarily know which thought is going to become useful later.

The Random Word Creativity Exercise

Here's another exercise you can try.

Open a book.

Point at a word.

Or look around the room and pick an object.

Let's say the random word is:

WINDOW.

Now ask yourself:

What does a window have to do with the problem I'm trying to solve?

Initially, perhaps nothing.

But start breaking it down.

A window can be transparent.

It can open.

It can close.

It has a frame.

It can reflect light.

It lets you see something on the other side.

It can hide something when covered.

Suddenly WINDOW isn't one idea.

It's six or seven different concepts.

Could one of those concepts connect with what you're creating?

That's the purpose of the exercise.

Randomness Takes Your Brain Somewhere New

That's the important bit.

Randomness doesn't have to provide the solution.

It simply pushes your brain down a road it probably wouldn't have travelled otherwise.

And creativity often happens when you start exploring those unusual roads.

That's particularly relevant to magic.

Because magic itself is full of seemingly random events.

Magic Makes Randomness Feel Impossible

Think about the language magicians use:

“Think of any card.”

“Name any number.”

“Choose any symbol.”

“Mix these up.”

“Pick one.”

To the spectator, everything feels random.

And yet somehow…

everything arrives at an impossible conclusion.

That's one of the things I find fascinating about magic.

You're creating an experience where randomness suddenly becomes order.

Mind Waves: Turning a Free Choice Into an Impossible Moment

Take Mind Waves, for example.

The spectator is dealing with a deck of different symbols.

From their perspective, they're making choices.

Things are mixed.

They concentrate on a symbol.

Yet somehow you're able to reveal what they're thinking.

And then the deck itself produces another impossible moment.

From the participant's perspective, there has been a journey from apparent randomness to an impossible conclusion.

That's where you get the:

“Wait… WHAT?!”

moment.

Mental Match Uses Randomness Differently

Mental Match plays with a similar idea using tiles.

The participant is tossing and eliminating tiles.

Everything feels wonderfully chaotic.

They're apparently arriving at a random playing card.

Yet that card matches a prediction.

Then the trick changes direction.

The same props become a colour-matching game.

Once again, apparently random decisions eventually lead to another prediction.

That's something I really enjoy exploring:

How can something that feels random ultimately arrive somewhere impossible?

Games Need the Right Amount of Randomness

Randomness is fascinating in games too.

But I think games need a balance between two things:

Choice and chance.

If absolutely everything is determined by chance, the player can start feeling like their decisions don't matter.

You're not really playing.

You're just watching things happen.

But if absolutely everything is predictable, you can lose surprise.

Somewhere between the two is a really interesting space.

You make a decision…

and then something happens that you weren't expecting.

Now you have to make another decision.

That's where things become fun.

Binary Flip: Simple Choices With Unexpected Consequences

That's something I explored with Binary Flip.

At its heart, Binary Flip is incredibly simple.

Black cards.

White cards.

And cards that are black on one side and white on the other.

But because you don't always know what's on the reverse of a card, there's uncertainty.

Then you've got Flip Cards such as Binary Bomb, Oh No!, Pick 'N' Pass, Sneaky Peek and Skip Shot that can suddenly change what's happening.

A decision leads to something unexpected.

That unexpected event creates another decision.

And that's where the fun comes from.

Get Out of Your Normal Creative Environment

If you want different ideas, I think you need to expose yourself to different things.

If I'm trying to create a magic trick, I don't necessarily want to spend all day looking at magic tricks.

Because I'll probably just end up thinking like a magician.

I'd rather look at:

Toys.

Games.

Packaging.

Books.

Technology.

Supermarkets.

Nature.

Advertising.

Things my son is playing with.

Even a cereal box might contain some tiny idea that makes my brain go somewhere unexpected.

You never know.

Ideas Are Everywhere – If You're Looking

I've talked before on the Mind Burp Podcast about where ideas come from.

And I genuinely think one of the answers is:

Everywhere.

But there's a catch.

You have to be paying attention.

Two people can walk through exactly the same shop.

One person sees shelves full of products.

The other person notices a mechanism, a piece of packaging, a shape, a game mechanic or a problem that sparks an entirely different idea.

The information was available to both people.

The difference was that one of them was looking for connections.

Try the Mind Burp Randomness Challenge

So here's a little challenge for you.

Find three completely random words.

Don't deliberately choose clever ones.

Make them genuinely random.

Open three books.

Ask three people for a word.

Use a random word generator.

Whatever you want.

Now give yourself five minutes.

Your job is to create something that somehow connects those three things.

It could be:

A magic trick.

A game.

An invention.

A story.

A business idea.

A lesson.

A product.

Anything.

But there's one important rule:

You're not allowed to say an idea is stupid.

Write Everything Down

Write down everything you think of.

Even the ridiculous stuff.

Especially the ridiculous stuff.

I've had hundreds of ideas over the years that initially sounded completely stupid.

Some remained stupid!

Others contained something worth exploring.

At the end of your five minutes, look at what you've written.

Is there anything there that makes you stop and think:

“Wait… what on earth is THAT?”

Good.

Explore it.

Because that might just be the beginning of something brilliant.

Don't Try Harder – Try Something Random

So the next time you're struggling to come up with an idea, perhaps don't try harder.

Try something random.

Pick up an object.

Open a book.

Choose a word.

Take a different route home.

Play a game you've never played before.

Walk into a shop you'd normally walk straight past.

Talk to somebody who knows absolutely nothing about what you're trying to create.

Give your brain something it wasn't expecting.

Because creativity isn't always about creating something from nothing.

Very often it's about taking two things that already exist and connecting them in a way nobody has thought of before.

And sometimes…

that connection happens completely by accident.

And if this gives you your own completely random Mind Burp, let me know.

Until next time…

keep experimenting, keep creating and, most importantly, be completely random.

Vinny